The cooling of components, in particular semiconductor components, which are arranged on circuit substrates (e.g. circuit carriers or circuit boards), is of significant importance with regard to the correct operation of an electronic device.
One known option for protecting semiconductor components against overheating is to distribute the resulting power loss to a plurality of semiconductors. In another frequently used method, cooling elements are mounted on the circuit substrate but these take up a lot of space on the circuit substrate. Also the last-mentioned method requires additional attachment elements to press the semiconductor components against the cooling elements, thereby making thermal contact.
Such a cooling element is for example known from U.S. Pat. No. 5,991,155 A. This document discloses a cooling element for an electronic device, which has a U-shaped cross-section, whereby a chamber is formed by the cooling element and a side wall of the housing, which is filled with a heat-transfer compound.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,621,304 A discloses a plate-like cooling element of the type mentioned above, which is screwed to a side wall of an electronic device with screws, whereby a component to be cooled is in contact with the screws and is therefore at a distance from the cooling element.
A disadvantage of the known solutions is that they are associated with a large space requirement on the circuit substrate and assembly and material costs are very high, which could also result in high production costs. The last-mentioned solution also has the disadvantage that the structure is such that optimum heat transfer is not achieved between the plate-like cooling element and the component to be cooled.